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    BAPTISTE RABICHON

    Baptiste Rabichon composes his photographs like a painter. An RC photographic paper is his blank canvas, a territory of exploration for his composition process, mixing analog photography, digital images and the projection of diverse objects from his daily life. Within the darkness of the darkroom he gathers his memories while shaking up our relation to photography. Flowers picked a few days before are placed on the enlarger and mixed with pictures collected from the Internet or in magazines. But the almost scientific approach of his aesthetic, which might evoke the herbaria of 21st century botanists, is disturbed by the sensuality of a mysterious female silhouette gently lying on the paper

    Born in Montpellier in 1987, Baptiste Rabichon lives and works in Paris. After viticulture and oenology studies, he went to ENSA Dijon in 2009, to ENSBA Lyon in 2011 and finally to ENSBA Paris in 2012. In 2015 he joined the National Studio for Contemporary Arts (Le Fresnoy) from which he graduated in 2017 with honors from the jury. He was the recipient of the 2017 BMW residency and participated in the 63th edition of the Salon de Montrouge.

    Born in 1987 in Montpellier
    Lives and works in Paris

    EDUCATION

    2015/2017 : FRESNOY
    2012/2014 : ENSBA Paris
    2011/2012 : ENSBA Lyon
    2009/2011 : ENSA Dijon

    SOLO EXHIBITIONS

    2023
    Verbatim, Galerie Binome, Paris, France
    Mother’s Rooms, Studio Frank Horvat, Boulogne, France

    2022
    Vues d’artiste, PARIS-B, Paris
    XXe siècle, Reuter Bausch Gallery, Luxembourg

    2021
    Sur le Motif, Festival Lieux-Mouvants, Lanrivain, France
    A Room with a View, Tap Seac Gallery, Macao, China

    ​2020
    Parisian Drawings, Aéroport de Paris-Orly, Paris, France

    2019
    Ranelaph, in collaboration with GwinZegal, Festival Lieux mouvants – Hameau de
    Saint-Antoine, Lanrivain, France
    Les chemises de mon père, CACN Centre d’Art Contemporain de Nîmes, Nîmes, France
    17ème, Galerie PARIS-B, Paris, France

    2018
    En ville, Cloître Saint-Trophime, Rencontres d’Arles, France
    Dame de cœur, PB PROJECT Galerie PARIS-B, Paris, France

    2017
    There Should Have Been Roses, Lianzhou Museum of Photography, Lianzhou, Chine

    2016
    Les discrètes, 71B, Paris, France

    2015
    Libraries, RVB Books, Paris, France
    Tout se délitait en parties, Galerie du Crous, Paris, France

    SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

    2021
    A fleur de monde – à propos du toucher, Centre Photographique Rouen Normandie
    Plantagories, Cité Internationale des arts, Paris
    A exposer en cas d’urgence, hidden place in Paris
    Upside down, DOC!, Paris
    Les intermittences du cœur, a four-handed collaboration with Fabrice Laroche, Galerie Binôme, Paris

    ​​2019
    Nous qui désirons sans fin, Galerie Jeune Création, Komunuma, Romainville, France
    Utopies, Le Studio Rouchon, Paris, France
    Le facteur (temps) sonne toujours deux fois, Delta Studio, Roubaix, France
    Translation et rotation, Art-O-Rama, Marseille, France

    2018
    63ème Salon de Montrouge, Le Beffroi, Montrouge
    Dos au mur, 18 rue Larrey, Paris
    Mutations, Gujral Foundation, Delhi, Inde

    2017
    Rêvez !, Collection Lambert, Avignon
    Zadigacité, en duo avec Morgane Tschiember, Delta Studio, Roubaix
    Surfaces sans cible, 22 Visconti, Paris
    L’eau de vos yeux, douze architectures géniales, 11bis Elzévir, Paris
    Roman (Panorama 19), Le Fresnoy, Tourcoing
    Emulsions, Arnaud Deschin Galerie, Paris
    Incarnations, Galerie Jean Collet, Vitry
    Les yeux levés vers ces hauteurs qui semblaient vides, Le Cric, Nîmes

    2016
    Une inconnue d’avance, Villa Emerige, Paris
    Ma samaritaine, Samaritaine, Paris
    Panorama 18, Le Fresnoy, Tourcoing
    L’échelle de la représentation, Immix Galerie, Paris
    ICM, Icart, Paris
    Art Up !, Grand Palais, Lille

    2015
    Supplices de l’instable, 24 rue Davoust, Pantin
    Mulhouse 015, Biennale de Mulhouse, Mulhouse
    Chers objets (2), Galerie Immanence, Paris
    Chers objets (1), Refectoire des cordeliers, Paris
    50 x 70, Espace Beaurepaire, Paris
    Sélection du Prix HSBC pour la photographie, HSBC, Paris
    Sélection du Prix Icart 2015, Espace Pierre Cardin, Paris

    2014
    Learning distances, 6b, Saint-Denis
    Variation, Espace des Blancs-Manteaux, Paris
    Cul, Espace Le Huit, Paris

    2013
    Hollywood Caillou, Galerie des Multiples, Paris
    Projet Rue Gustave Goublier, Paris
    5191, IESA, Paris

    PUBLICATIONS

    2020
    CACHES, RRose Editions, Paris

    2018
    En ville, Editions du Trocadéro, Paris

    2015
    Scanners Frolics, Rrose Éditions, RVB Books, Paris
    Libraries, RVB Books, Paris

    AWARDS

    2021
    Laureate of the Picto/Lab, Picto Foundation award

    2018
    Laureate of the Moly-Sabata / Salon de Montrouge award

    2017
    Laureate of the BMW photography award 2017

    RESIDENCIES

    2021
    Résidence Picto/Lab, Picto Foundation, Paris

    2019/2020
    Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France

    2018
    Moly-Sabata

    2017
    Flash France, Institut Culturel Français, New-Delhi, Inde

    2016
    Écritures de lumière, Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Chalon-sur-Saône

    LE NON DUPE ERRE
    Text from the presse release of the solo exhibition Les Chemises de mon père, at CACN, Centre d’art contemporain de Nîmes, 2019

    – By Jean-Christophe Arcos

    For the Centre d’art contemporains de Nîmes’ last exhibition in its current location, Baptiste Rabichon unveils one of his most intimate projects, one that draws as much inspi- ration from his own personal history as from the history of the city of Nîmes itself. After having exhibited his work in India and China, Arles, Paris, and Roubaix, the artist returns home to the city of his roots.
    But this is not, strictly speaking, a work of remembrance: Les Chemises de mon père (My Father’s Shirts) doesn’t simply recall some distant past, a childhood memory or even a nostalgic reminiscence- On the contrary, temporalities collide and merge, levels of history are superimposed one on top of the other, mixed materials and techniques weave together images that are less like an unambiguous narrative than a fusion of motif, medium and intense reflection on their alliance.

    Through his Chemises, Baptiste Rabichon makes visible just what is currently at stake in contemporary photography, as well as the traces of what he has borrowed fromthose who have come before him. By placing some of his subjects in close proximity to the photosensitive paper and casting their sha- dows, the artist recalls Sir John Herschel’s an- thotypes, or the cyanotype still lifes of Anna Atkins (Baptiste Rabichon often gravitates towards the oral and vegetal world, as in his series Ranelagh, Natures mortes aux silhouettes or, more recently, 17ème).

    Rabichon’s use of chromogenic de- velopment, (the successive and combined oxidization of a developing agent and a coupled color pigment), demonstrates an advanced understanding of the chemistry used in analog photography, but also a syncretism between absolute control of the process and the urge to let go. Technical mastery and se- rendipitous reactions work together to form the final image.
    Yet another layer is then added to this initial chemical collaboration, one that weaves the work together with the contemporary: the role of the machine.

    The recurrent, but not exclusive, use of a digital scanner is seen by Baptiste Rabichon as a way to complete his vision: the digital eye discerns and restores that which the hu- man eye cannot see. Just as Antonioni’s Blow Up had predicted, nothing escapes it.

    Either as a way to humanize it, to diminish it, or simply out of playfulness, the mechanical precision employed by Baptiste Rabichon is often altered, tinkered with, leeched, defor- med. Mutilated and pushed to its limits, this precision gives way to an intriguing array of unexpected results: Stains, glitches, and dif- fraction are markers of phenomena inherent to modern optics and which the artist allows to be assembled on the same plane, brining into question the act of seeing itself.

    “A true medium condenses several surfaces” — this was already a credo of the Cubists, who were adamant about proving it. They wanted to show everything, including the hidden facets latter pursued by Louise Bourgeois in her Fabric Works, for example.

    And yet folds in the image hint at drapes hidden from view; stains eclipse pieces of matter – It is as if a stain protects as much as it spoils: spreading out over the skin of a photograph, a stain gives us access the fore- ground, as well as allowing us to dive into the deeper layers and strata of the image. Different states of visibility overlap: the same textile is scanned, photogramed at a distance, projected… underscoring the complexity that any image constructs.

    Imagination is no longer suf cient to make an image: Between vision and realization, a series of movements, of phenomena, of events unfold in a chronology of challenges and trial runs. The result is not a triumph over adversity, but rather a palimpsest marked by otherness: If it is as much an act carried out “against the machine” as Baptiste Rabichon claims, it seems to also be an act of resistance only within the bounds of a cooperative proximity.

    This association of man and machine is no doubt cemented through our relationship to code: While the former hopes to main- tain an authentic connection to the real, dis- pensed from the relativity and subjectivity of language, the later is activated only by an objective and preprogramed logic. Between clash and articulation, Baptiste Rabichon and his photographic devices reclaim the funda- mental ambivalence between illumination and the occult.

    Therefore, while these Chemises address the patchwork of patterns and imagery of indiennes de Nîmes, the threading of the fabric, the gesture and sometimes the figure (the body) of the artist, they attest most of all to the impurity of artistic creation, of the work, which having brought into the world so many serendipitous aberrations, remains acu- tely aware of its empire, as well as its instabilities.